The Rise and Fall of America's Jet-Powered Car 338
Pickens writes "The WSJ reports that the automobile designs of the 1950s and 1960s were inspired by the space race and the dawn of jet travel. But one car manufacturer, Chrysler, was bold enough to put a jet engine in an automobile that ran at an astounding 60,000 rpm on any flammable fluid including gasoline, diesel, kerosene, jet fuel, peanut oil, alcohol, tequila, or perfume. Visionary Chrysler designer George Huebner believed that there was plenty to recommend the turbine. People loved the car. In a publicity scheme to promote its 'jet' car, Chrysler commissioned Ghia to handcraft 50 identical car bodies and each car would be lent to a family for a few months and then passed on to another. Chrysler received more than 30,000 requests in 1962 to become test drivers and eventually 203 were chosen who logged more than one million miles (mostly trouble free) in the 50 Ghia prototypes. In the end Chrysler killed the turbine car after OPEC's 1973 oil embargo. 'How different would America be now if we all drove turbine-powered cars? It could have happened. But government interference, shortsighted regulators, and indifferent corporate leaders each played a role in the demise of a program that could have lessened US dependence on Middle East oil.'"
Turbine (Score:5, Interesting)
The word, I think, is "turbine" (or even "jet turbine,")-- not "Jet powered".
How noisy were they?
Reduce dependence? (Score:1, Interesting)
"But government interference, shortsighted regulators, and indifferent corporate leaders each played a role in the demise of a program that could have lessened US.dependence on Middle East oil."
Could have? I suppose. But it's highly unlikely. The fuel efficiency was poor. Reducing imports would have required development of an entirely new fuel stream other than gasoline. That's been a struggle despite many incentives.
Although, if it could run on tequila, I suppose every liquor store automatically turns into a rather expensive fuel station.
Not gonna happen (Score:2, Interesting)
What happens to the 60,000 rpm turbine (and associated pieces) in an accident? Not good.
My neighbor had one of these (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was in high school, my neighbor applied to 'test' of "Chrysler's turbine cars for 3 months. She had to write an essay explaining why she wanted to participate. The car was beautifully futuristic for its time and everything else seemed rather pedestrian. She took my brother and I on a ride in it just once. The experience consisted of a tour of the engine compartment, a trip to the newly-opened McDonalds, and a stop to fill up from a kerosene, gravity-fed tank that a local gas station had installed just for this Chrysler. I remember that the car sound like a household vacuum cleaner only a bit louder. You could easily have a conversation while stand next to the car. Inside the car, it was even quieter. Much of the car was fabricated from aluminum and we were warned not to put our weight on places (the tube-like console, for instance) lest we dent it. The car idled at approximately 10,000 RPM and it had a tach, which I remember watching in fascination. The turbine produce approximately 140 HP, so performance was ordinary. Our neighbor was worried about letting the car sit in one spot for too long as the exhaust was hot enough to melt asphalt. The turbine itself was wired against tampering. All the bolts had little wires threaded through the heads that were then attached to the component the bolt was used in. The car drove quite normally and the only indication it was powered by anything other the a standard IC engine was the vacuum cleaner-like sound it produced.
Re:Turbines are fuel guzzlers (Score:3, Interesting)
Gas turbines with that level of efficiency are built using different construction techniques so they can run at a higher temperature. Since it is for a stationary application you can afford making the turbine very heavy. You can also use more fragile ceramics which do not handle the vibrations of a moving vehicle very well. Then they are cooled using water cooling towers. They are basically using a river as a cooling source.
In a car you cannot use such cooling mechanisms. You basically use air cooling. You cannot make the engine too heavy because you will decrease mileage per gallon.
Try checking out the operational range for vehicles with gas turbines like the M1 and T-80 tanks versus the Leopard 2 and T-84 tanks which use regular diesel engines.
It is not impossible to do a viable turbine car. But it will probably have to be a hybrid in order to reduce idle power fuel consumption, use more advanced lightweight construction materials and techniques.
Re:Not gonna happen (Score:4, Interesting)
A turbocharger is tiny compared to a turbine engine so the energy that would need to dissipate is much much larger and some of it could end up dissipating into your skull.
Want to See One? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want to see one of these fantastic cars, there's one on display at the St. Louis Museum of Transportation. I love that place; loads of trains, cars and all manner of awesome transportation stuff (even some boats)... and one of the turbine cars is still on display there. I ended up signing up for a membership to the place because my 10 year old son loved it so much.
I think the technology in this thing was awesome... hell, I even love the styling in a retro sort of way. I would have jumped at the opportunity to buy and own a turbine powered car... and though I'm sure the fuel mileage wasn't fantastic, the fact that it could run on just about anything meant that you could have filled it up with whatever was cheapest at the time and used that to get to work. I'm sure that might still happen again; the age of the turbine car may only be in limbo... not over.
Jay Leno has a turbine powered motorbike as well (http://www.bikemenu.com/turbine.html). I remember reading an article he wrote about it that made me laugh; that it was often interesting to sit at a set of lights and look in the rear view mirror and watch the front bumper of the car behind him melting because of the heat output...
Re:Well, if not for car, how about a train? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.northeast.railfan.net/turbines.html [railfan.net]
Re:Turbines are fuel guzzlers (Score:3, Interesting)
Gas turbines have are over 60% efficient.
As far as I know, efficiencies that high are only possible in a combined cycle application where you also add a huge steam turbine powered by the exhaust heat of the gas turbine. The gas turbine by itself is not as efficient as a good diesel engine, and gas turbine efficiency scales with size. By definition, an automotive turbine is going to be small and inefficient.
Re:Series Hybrids Rock (Score:3, Interesting)
Schwarzenegger has an after market conversion hybrid for his Hummer. It uses a jet turbine to fill the battery. I recall reading the article in 2006 or 2007 in MIT Tech Review.
The problem WAS coupling to the wheels... (Score:5, Interesting)
The biggest problem with turbine powered cars was coupling to the wheels. Turbines have two unfortunate properties that make them very unsuited to directly driving the wheels of a car:
1) They spin far too fast, so you have to have a transmission to slow that down.
2) they don't like to slow down too much, so you have to have some means to clutch them so starting from a stop won't stall them.
In applications like helicopters, that's not a big deal: once you have the rotors turning, you'd like to keep them turning.
But for cars it was a deal-breaker.
I highlight was because there is a better idea on the block:
http://www.capstoneturbine.com/prodsol/solutions/hev.asp [capstoneturbine.com]
The idea Capstone has is that you have a single spindle turbine, with a generator on the same shaft as the turbine. There is no mechanical coupling of torque to the wheels - the system makes electricity. That works well with an electric drive train - electric motors have no problems with making torque at zero RPM, they have a wide torque band that reduces or eliminates the need for a transmission, and the turbine can be started and stopped as needed to maintain the batteries. The Capstone turbines don't need lubrication as they use air bearings, and they meet or beat all the air quality standards on the books or planned to be on the books, running on diesel.
I just hope somebody gets smart, and makes a van chassis on this tech, with different bodies for Suzy Soccermom, UPS, Class-C motorhomes, and basic transportation, that uses heat pumps + resistive heating for climate control (so that it can run off the traction battery without needing to run the turbine to make heat), and that gives me access to 120VAC@50A from the traction batteries (plus an inverter, naturally) so that I can use it for camping as needed.
(no, I neither work for nor own stock in Capstone - I just think this is the way things need to go.)
Re:My neighbor had one of these (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember Dad telling me about these cars, and specifically the exhaust issue you mentioned. Originally the exhaust pointed straight out the back, however if some pedestrian were to walk behind the car they would end up with severe burns very quickly. As such, they aimed the exhaust downwards, but then you had the issue you mentioned about melting the asphalt.
US oil imports stats (Score:3, Interesting)
not to mention US oil imports from the middle east has never exceeded 20%
http://www.allthebestbits.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/us-oil-imports3.gif [allthebestbits.net]
Re:Retrocausality, according to Wall Street Journa (Score:4, Interesting)
Looks like they solved the noise problem (except for that "turbine whine" described), but the "gulping vast quantities of fuel" wasn't so easily solvable.
Today, however, a gas turbine connected to a generator to charge the batteries for a pure-electric drive car might be a feasible solution, as it would allow the turbine to only run at full load, and thus achieve its best efficiencies.
I suppose a hybid could work, too, again with the turbine only running when the vehicle needs a lot of power, but then you get into transmission losses that you could avoid with a pure electric motor drive.
Dead idea for a reason (Score:4, Interesting)
> How different would America be now if we all drove turbine-powered cars
LOL. A turbine uses between 60 and 70% of it's full-throttle fuel use while standing still. The compressor soaks up a lot of power. They're fine for systems that operate at high power levels all the time, or where power-to-weight is the only major consideration, but for auto use they're useless. Hybrids fix this, but they didn't have LiIon batteries in the 50/60's.
> single spindle turbine, with a generator on the same shaft as the turbine
Use a Wankel. All the same advantages. They're even replacing turbines for APUs.
Maury
No dependence (Score:4, Interesting)
Dependence on Mideast oil? That's bullshit. The majority of U.S. comes from Canada, Mexico and Nigeria. It could stop importing oil from the Mideast tomorrow if it really wanted to, but doesn't probably for political reasons.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html [doe.gov]
Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxium car (1933) (Score:5, Interesting)
The Dymaxion car [wikipedia.org] was a concept car designed by U.S. inventor and architect Buckminster Fuller in 1933.] The word Dymaxion is a brand name that Fuller gave to several of his inventions, to emphasize that he considered them part of a more general project to improve humanity's living conditions. The car had a fuel efficiency of 30 miles per US gallon. It could transport 11 passengers. While Fuller claimed it could reach speeds of 120 miles per hour, the fastest documented speed was 90 miles per hour.
Then there is this:
In his 1988 book The Age of Heretics, author Art Kleiner maintained that the real reason why Chrysler refused to produce the car was because bankers had threatened to recall their loans, feeling that the car would destroy sales for vehicles already in the distribution channels and second-hand cars.
Re:Turbine (Score:4, Interesting)
But if you integrate a gas turbine into a serial hybrid, you can keep it running at full load until the battery is fully charged and then turn it off. Considering that the first serial hybrid was built before 1900, it's strange that apparently nobody has implemented that combination before.
Publicity Stunt (Score:5, Interesting)
My dad worked for Chrysler back then. He got to participate in a publicity stunt with the turbine car.
After alerting the TV network, he drove up to Rockefeller Center in the turbine car. In front of the cameras he poured a quart of Chanel No. 5 in the tank. Then he drove it all over Manhattan the rest of the day.
As an added twist, he did the whole thing on three wheels. He had removed one of the front wheels to demonstrate the superiority of Chrysler's torsion bar suspension.
I think the whole thing was very cool.
Re:Retrocausality, according to Wall Street Journa (Score:5, Interesting)
...if they were under the CAFE standards would have made it impossible for the auto manufacturers to meet those standards.
Manufacturers, meanwhile, would have been pressured (and incented) to built larger passenger vehicles to better standards of fuel economy, to take advantage of the new market for fuel-efficient medium-large vehicles in the window between CAFE-compliant cars and gas-guzzling, price-prohibitive light trucks. Remember, the nominal purpose for the light-truck loophole in CAFE was not to allow every household a cheap minivan; it was to avoid penalizing businesses (especially small businesses) for whom light trucks were a legitimate requirement for their work. The same goal could - and should - have been achieved through a directed tax deduction/credit, but American automakers were too heavily dependent on their high-margin light trucks, and their lobbyists hobbled CAFE's scope accordingly.
Re:Turbine (Score:4, Interesting)
before turbines came along, there simply were no large helicopters, only the tiny two-seaters. Now, we have helicopters that can pick up electric transmission line towers and set them in place, or are used in logging in roadless forests. No helicopter with a piston engine could lift that kind of weight. Power-to-weight ratio is easily the most important feature of turbines.
One, you're exaggerating the weakness of piston helicopters. We most certainly DID have piston powered choppers that "carried more than two people". As far back as 1949, we had radial engined choppers like the H-19 that could carry up to 12 troops. Modern choppers like the UH-60 can carry only two more, for up to 14. Yes, with their twin turboshafts they can carry three times the weight that the H-19 could with it's single 600 hp radial. But that radial used a hell of a lot less fuel doing much of the same job that modern Blackhawks do. The improved version of the H-19... the H-34 Choctaw... had double the horsepower, and could carry just 3K lbs less than a modern Blackhawk... and again, used a hell of a lot less fuel. Even if fuel were still cheap, in military usage, fuel supplies... and thus fuel econony... is an important issue. I'd argue that it was unecessary to go to an all turbine helicopter force. Unless you need huge cargo capacity, the only time turbine engines make a difference is in very high altitude areas of operation like Afghanistan. In most other places, if you simply want to move a dozen troops from point A to point B, a radial H-34 would still do the job at a much more frugal cost-per-hour. And the Navy has the same issue with their ships... if it isn't nuclear, pretty soon, it's going to be powered by a gas turbine... even big heavies like oilers and amphibious transports. Unless you need the electrical power from turbines for things like the Aegis radar system... which the big uglies don't have... you're using a lot more fuel with gas turbines than you are with the older oil fired boilers (or even big commercial marine diesels, for that matter).